A note on product leadership roles and career progression

Product leadership is in its infancy. Product leadership roles and career progression is highly variable as a result. Associate Product Manager to Product Manager is a fairly consistent career pathway but, in all honesty, all bets are off from that point onwards. Use and implementation of Senior Product Manager, Lead Product Manager, and Head of Product is highly variable for a lot of reasons, here are just a few:

• if an small-medium organisation produces a single product and only has a few Product Managers then their career progression and use of roles might be Associate Product Manager –> Product Manager –> Head of Product
• if an organisation is medium-sized and/or produces more than one product then it may have internal groupings that require Senior Product Managers (sometimes called Group Product Managers), and use of roles and career progression might be Associate Product Manager –> Product Manager –> Senior Product Manager –> Head of Product
• if an organisation is Enterprise sized and/or has several business areas then it might have a Lead Product Manager who acts like a head of product for each business area, each of which has its own groupings, and use of roles and career progression might be Associate Product Manager –> Product Manager –> Senior Product Manager –> Lead Product Manager –> Head of Product. The Senior Product Manager in this context is comparable to the Head of Product in the small organisation with a single product.

You only need to take a look at the Mind the Product Jobs board to see this variation.

What’s the point of this observation? This handbook will focus on product leadership as a single ‘thing’ and share guidance that’s (hopefully) useful whether you’re a Senior Product Manager, Lead Product Manager, or a Head of Product - with limited space dedicated to Senior Product Manager, Lead Product Manager, and Head of Product as individual roles.